Thursday, March 12, 2009

So I start out the day thinking about surnames for my hero, trying to come up with some sort of new naming system for the new "world" I'm creating.

After that I start the heavy research: tectonic plates. One of the first things I do is to look at a map of the major tectonic plates of the world. I read several articles, then progress through the day to thinking about time (again), and battles and evil monsters and backstory and plotting my novel.

Then I go back to research...this time about the flip-flop of the magnetic field of earth, the lessening of the field, the wandering of magnetic north...and finally onto magnetic anomalies...I find a map of magnetic anomalies (about 12 hours later) and I stare and stare. Right there, unexplained on the map, are some lines that look familiar. I pull up my first map, and, yes, those are the tectonic plates. Now those of you with a science background would think "of course the tectonic plates would affect magnetic anomalies (or vice versa)" but it was a revelation to me. Wow. Or maybe geologists/geographers always put the plates in....